Part 9 (2/2)

He felt afraid. It must be because he had woken so abruptly and didn't know where they were. The road appeared to continue on up towards the high mountain. Worried that his voice might sound childish and angry, he didn't say anything. Foolishly enough, he could feel his throat thickening. He had to wake up properly.

She had a rucksack with a frame in the boot. She took it out and started stuffing into it everything lying about in the car, putting the soap and toothbrush wrapped in the Betty Boop towel on top.

He took the rucksack and heaved it on. They climbed down the steep slope to the rapids and started following a path along the river.

'Is it far?' he said.

'Fifty-five minutes.'

Idiotically exact. She might just as well have said an hour. He imagined she always wanted to appear certain.

'Then I can't carry the pail in my hand,' he said, stopping to tie it on to the rucksack.

They left the river and came out into rocky terrain where there were parched old spruces that were barely alive, some of them with sickly witch's broom growing wildly in them. The path sometimes ran across bog channels smelling fermented from the springy ma.s.s beneath them. She walked ahead of him and they rested only twice the whole way. Then she smoked. The last bit sloped downwards. He saw a dull surface of water through the trees, clouds of mist swirling above it, reddish in the morning light. The lake lay in a round bowl of mountains. The water was utterly still.

'We're there,' she whispered, though he could see no house. She seemed to him to be slinking like a lynx the last bit down to the sh.o.r.e, where she sank to her knees and scooped up some water in her hands. She rinsed her face and sat for a long while with her head down.

After a while, she seemed to rouse herself and signed to him to come after her. If she had resembled a lynx, he felt like an elk, a clumsy yearling cras.h.i.+ng down and breaking dead branches. A diver was making its way across the lake with a silvery red plough of water behind it. Johan frightened it and it started rising, its wings flapping and feet kicking and tearing the water.

'You can let the eel go now,' she said.

He shook his head.

'But what are you going to do with it?'

He didn't know. They started walking again. The path along the sh.o.r.e branched off and ran up through the forest where the sowthistle had starting appearing. It was very light now and the heat rose as they moved away from the mere and the raw mist. He caught a glimpse of a house between the birches, a large brown timbered building with a gla.s.sed-in veranda. He was amazed to find a house like that here. No car could get along the path, though possibly a tractor could.

The gla.s.s in the veranda windows was flas.h.i.+ng orange lightning in the morning sun. The roof ridges had black wooden bird silhouettes on them and the whole house had tarred weather-boarding all over it. Then he realised it was a shooting lodge, the kind bigwigs had had built at the beginning of the century.

She didn't take him up to the big house, but went on into the birchwoods to a wooden outbuilding beside a riverbank.

'You can sleep in the grouse shed.' That wasn't as bad as it sounded, for when they went in, he saw it was equipped with bunks and a table in front of the one window. It smelt of foam rubber. The mattresses had begun to smell in the heat still shut in the closed cottage.

She vanished without a word, but he knew she would come back. His towel, toothbrush and soap lay on the table. A mosquito window was propped against the table and he started putting it up. When she returned with a gla.s.s of milk and two sandwiches, cool air was pouring in through the netting. He sat down on the bed, leaning forward because of the upper bunk, and ate the food. She stood smoking by the window, looking out. When he had finished, he kicked off his boots, crawled into bed and pulled the quilt up over him. Then she turned round. He couldn't see her face, it was almost black against the light behind.

'You and I have something to do,' she said. 'Then you can sleep.'

She came over and pulled the quilt off him. Leaning over she put her hand on the front of his jeans. She gave a little laugh, like a snort. She must have felt his d.i.c.k throbbing.

When she pulled down the zip of his flies, he was scared. He felt she was handling him carelessly and he was afraid his foreskin would get caught in the zip. But of course the trousers were tight and she had to make an effort to get them open. Anyhow he had nothing there when she got it out, only a soft handful of skin and slack muscles.

'So soft,' she said, and now she sounded like ptarmigan calling far away in the birch woods. His d.i.c.k started rising again. Her breath smelt of spirits. She had gone straight to the duty-free liquor up there. Not that surprising. She had driven a long way and was perhaps not feeling too good. But she hadn't brought the bottle with her to offer him some, and that angered him. The anger, small as it was, did him good. For a moment he had been really frightened, not just anxious but really frightened. Her mouth was slightly open, her tongue playing in the corner of it. She kept fondling him all the time.

He had given quite a lot of thought to an occasion like this. That it would come. But he had thought about a girl, a faceless girl, yes, but soft. He was the one who was going to do all sorts of things. He had worried about not finding the way, not really knowing, or being clumsy and hurting her. But not like this.

She was holding his t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es, her middle finger far in, embarra.s.singly close to his a.r.s.ehole. He wriggled a little, but the fingers were firm in their grip, a strong hand, short and broad.

Then she rose slowly and he followed, not really knowing if that was from her hold on him. She fumbled at the bunk above, pulled, the foam-rubber mattress came tumbling down and she flung it on to the floor. Then she turned him with his back to the mattress and the next moment he was sitting on it. She stayed where she was, undressing.

That went quickly. She had nothing on but jersey and trousers and a pair of rustling pale-blue panties. He was sitting with his knees drawn up, his hands clasped over them. He couldn't make up his mind to do anything. His ears were ringing and the light was getting stronger and stronger. He could hear the water in the river and the birds.

She pulled off his trousers and underpants, now so filthy he was ashamed. The slimy mud from the well had penetrated through the material of his trousers. He had stood by the road in a s.h.i.+rt smelling of fish, a faded sweats.h.i.+rt under his arm. She could think what she liked.

Once he was naked, she stood astride him and he had her bush of curly hair right at eye level. But he closed his eyes. He had a hard-on now and it was throbbing.

He sat leaning slightly back, propping himself on his hands, and he didn't have to do anything. She parted her legs and threaded herself on to him. It was a little awkward, his d.i.c.k grubbing about in the small lips and flaps. But it was moist and he slid in and she sank down, heavily, far too heavily on to him. For although the pleasure made his nerves tingle, it hurt. She twisted his d.i.c.k back as she leant away from him and he came with a pain that made his upper lip curl back from his teeth.

Then he recovered, grimacing and leaning back. She slid off him and he felt it run and run. But she ignored it, took the quilt off the lower bunk and drew it over them.

They hadn't kissed. My fault, he thought. I did nothing. It just came for me.

He leant over her and with his lips explored the now pale face. He felt the coa.r.s.eness of her hair, but everything else was very soft. Her lips were quite small, like the lips down there. And her tongue had a lively little point. She was like sand, soft and harsh and pale. As he lay leaning over her, he felt how very much stronger he was, that she was not a large woman. Small and fair.

After a while, she began to finger him again and when there was a response, she pulled. This was not as he had imagined. He had thought all this kind of thing went like a dream, almost imperceptibly. Not purposefully like this.

Then she did it again. Though this time he lay on his back as she sat astride him. He was more a.s.sured now. He had put his hands on her thighs below her hips. If she bent too far back, he would pull her towards him. This time it was good in a dreamy way, almost as if in his sleep. She closed her eyes and he saw her teeth gleaming with saliva as she drew up her upper lip. He could see the thin skin of her eyelids quivering and her jaw muscles tightening. She's enjoying it, he thought, and I am the one doing it. Move slowly. He gathered strength in his strange torpid state in order to raise his back and turn them both over. But then she opened her eyes and said: 'What's your G.o.d called?'

He didn't understand the question and echoed: 'G.o.d?'

He wasn't even sure he had heard right. Perhaps he was making a fool of himself by asking like that. But that was the word. She repeated it and it was there, like a stone in your mouth.

'You're sensitive to disturbances,' she said quietly, and slid away. Everything about him had softened. But she was still expecting him to answer. She lay on her side, propped on one elbow, looking at him, quizzically. His head was empty. Called? he was about to echo, but didn't. What is G.o.d called?

He remembered a preacher with a voice that had sunk from the first syllable so that it sounded like singing: 'Jeesus is waiting for you! Jeesus!' And his grandmother beginning to tremble. He had felt her body shaking inside her coat, and he had withdrawn from her, ashamed and wanting to pee.

'The G.o.d of your forefathers,' she said, helping him, and at last he understood.

'Peive, one of the Lapp G.o.ds,' he said uncertainly.

That was school knowledge. His teacher's enthusiam had made him feel just as embarra.s.sed as he was now.

'I thought Tjas Olmai was your man, otherwise.'

She could see from his face that he knew nothing and she laughed.

'The water man,' she said. 'The G.o.d of the fish.'

'A fleeting moment stole my life away.' It was a popular song. Or a poem.

Birger didn't really read poetry, but he might have heard it on the radio. Anyhow, it fitted. More than a moment, of course. Twenty, twenty-five minutes. Or beyond time. It had probably been happiness. Or in any case the most powerful thing he had ever experienced. He ought to tell her about it. But he couldn't. He should have done it straight away.

Or now?

He slowly drained the last of his drink. The liquor was very diluted, the ice melted. Then he went up to the bedroom and stood outside the door, actually fearful. He thought about how much had happened in a year, eighteen months. Slid away and been displaced.

Then he opened the door and she sat up suddenly in bed as if she, too, were frightened. Her face was pale in the night light, her dark hair in a thick plait tied with a ribbon.

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